View from 35th
floor of Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle looking east down
Central Park South

By Carter B. Horsley

One of the first images virtually anyone conjures
up about New York City, along with the Statue of Liberty and the
Empire State and Chrysler Buildings and Rockefeller Center, is
the horse-and-buggy carriages awaiting customers along Grand Army
Plaza at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue - the main entrance to Central
Park, the frontyard of the Plaza Hotel and the beginning of Central
Park South.

Horse-drawn carriages
at Grand Army Plaza at eastern end of Central Park South

Although the razing of the Savoy Plaza Hotel
to make way for the General Motors Building destroyed much of
the eloquence of this location, it remains the city's finest and
most impressive outdoor area. If it were not for the traffic,
it would be one of the world's greatest public gathering spots,
but the traffic is overwhelmingly present for this intersection
not only separates midtown from the Upper East Side but also is
a major gateway to the Queensboro Bridge and is heavily used,
inexcusably, by suburban commuter buses.

The problem with Central Park South is that
its south sidewalk is too narrow. By the time the city decided
to remove the trolley line that once ran up and down 59th Street,
automobile traffic was already horrendous. The obvious solution
of tunneling automobile traffic from Columbus Circle to the bridge's
entrance at Second Avenue was made impossible by subways that
run beneath much of the route.

View of midtown
and Central Park South from Great Lawn in Central Park

Incredibly, the city allows parking on the
south side of Central Park South, apart from the areas reserved
for taxis in front of its several hotels. Although the architecture
of Central Park South is not bad, it is hard to appreciate fully
because of the narrow sidewalk and the fact that trees block the
vista of the building's bases from within the park. Even though
both 58th and 59th Streets east of Fifth Avenue are one-way running
to the east, the traffic is frightful, in large part because of
non-city buses and, more recently, a proliferation of tourist
buses based around Grand Army Plaza at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue.

Varied Central
Park South skyline

Clearly what is needed is a new bus terminal
for the East Side close to the river and close to 42nd Street
for connection with public transit. Such a terminal actually existed
at 38th Street between First and Second Avenues but was redeveloped
into a huge residential tower, but space remains in the area around
and over the Manhattan approach to the Queens Midtown Tunnel and
should be redeveloped for such a purpose, which would take the
suburban buses out of midtown and keep them only on Second and
First Avenues.

Such a solution, however, would still be insufficient
to alleviate midtown's outrageous traffic. Private cars must be
banned in Manhattan south of 96th Street for everyone except the
handicapped. This will require the erection of many major multi-story
garages at major public transportation sites in the outer boroughs,
but those tremendous costs would be more than offset by the greater
utilization of the city's mass transit. Obviously, a reevaluation
of the city's for-hire car services would need to be made and
the city could mandate that all such services use large, comfortable
vehicles made to the city's specifications with roof windows to
enhance the traveling experience. By mandating that use of new
vehicles begin in say five years, the inconvenience and expense
to the services could be phased out. If Detroit is stupid enough
not to build the new vehicles, build them in the outer boroughs!
If the car services refuse to comply, then ban them altogether
as well and let the rich use the mass transit if they want to
continue to get rich at the expense of everyone else in the city!

In the best of all cities, a stroll across
Central Park South should be one of the great pastimes and an
expanded south sidewalk could accommodate outdoor cafes. The south
sidewalk on Central Park South must be widened by one traffic
lane and taxis must lose their standing zones and the hell with
street parking.

The redevelopment of the former New York Coliseum
site dragged on for a decade or so and been downscaled and thoroughly
botched up, thanks mostly to the vociferous, self-anointed exaggerators
who think that tall towers are terrible although many of them
live in some of the best tall towers along Central Park West and
Fifth Avenue.

The initial plans of Mortimer J. Zuckerman,
the publishing magnate and real estate developer who won the competition
for the Coliseum site were boldly daring. The plan by Moshe Safdie
was dramatic and contemporary and largely appropriate for the
site although the plan had some rough, blistery edges that needed
refinement. A second plan by a new architect, David Childs of
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was a major improvement because
the design was highly complementary to the great architectural
heritage of Central Park West and yet still appropriately imposing
enough for such an important gateway site. A third revision, again
by Childs, bowed to substantial pressure from several civic groups
and lost much of its powerful imagery by being scaled down considerably.

In the meantime, of course, the economy went
south, the project's major tenant withdrew and the developer could
not justify paying the city about $338 million just for the land.
Accordingly, he wanted to "weasel" out of his commitment,
which included a $38 million downpayment and either renegotiate
longer terms in which to wait for the market to improve or build
a smaller project at a smaller cost to himself and a smaller revenue
to the city, or, in fact, to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
that owns the site. He then proposed building on only half the
site, which would, most likely, thwart the potential for doing
anything truly important and result in another 40-story or so
office tower rather than something that would indicate the city
was alive in the last quarter century as far as design is concerned.

Zuckerman finally dropped out in 1994 forfeiting
his downpayment and the future of this prominent site remained
very unclear for several years. The story, however, eventually
had a happy ending as in early 2004 the Time Warner Center, designed
by David Childs, but for a different client, opened, adding a
glossy twin-towered, mixed-use project to Columbus Circle (see
The City Review article).

More Central
Park South rooftops

Central Park South itself is fully developed.
Its crown jewel, of course, is the Plaza Hotel (see The
City Review article). The other hotels, such as the 46-story,
neo-Venetian Moderne-style Park Lane (see The
City Review article), which was erected in 1971, shown at
the left in the photograph at the left, and the smaller and more
interesting 1931 Art Deco-style St. Moritz (later renamed the
Ritz Carlton, see The City Review article),
best known for its Café de la Paix sidewalk cafe and Rumplemayer's,
a restaurant known for its desserts, shown at the right in the
same photograph, both designed by Emery Roth & Sons, Essex
House, (see The City Review article)
a 1930 Art Deco design by Frank Grad renovated in 1991 by new
Japanese owners and the home of Les Célébrités,
a rather fancy restaurant, shown at the right in the photograph
at the lower left on this page with its huge and hugely inappropriate
rooftop sign, have varying degrees of charm, but are mainly justified
by their spectacular park views. For a few decades, there seemed
to be more prostitutes and heaps of horse dung than pedestrians
along Central Park South. If its sidewalks were widened and the
Coliseum site redeveloped spectacularly, the Central Park South
properties would soar in desirability and value.

Hopefully, the city will also sell the former
Gallery of Modern Art building designed by Edward Durrell Stone
on the south arc of Columbus Circle to some museum rather than
keeping it for its Department of Cultural Affairs, which has done
little with this rather attractive and charming white marble building.
(See The City Review article.)

Central Park South does boast one great apartment
building, the Gainsborough Studios, (see The
City Review article) at No. 222, built in 1908 and designed
by C. W. Buckham with double-height ceilings and large windows
and attractive sculpted facade with a frieze by Isidore Konti.
Its other interesting apartment building, developed by Bernard
Spitzer, is 200 Central Park South, (see The
City Review article) whose mid-rise lower portion raps in
a gentle curve around the southwest corner at Seventh Avenue providing
more park views to more apartments than the city's traditional
straight edge. The building looks more Floridian than New York,
but surprisingly its innovative massing has been rarely imitated
in Manhattan. The issue of maintaining the street wall once seemed
very important and generally still should be a major contextual
design concern, but exceptions sometimes work, as here, especially
at some intersections and given the fact that the city's plaza
zoning bonuses, now largely phased out but prevalent for a few
decades, opened up lots of unnecessary gaps.

The oddest roof belongs to the Trump Parc apartment
building (see The City Review article).
Its regilded crown seems like some cloth cap left over by some
lost wandering Sumerian. The most attractive roof is the copper
mansard roof with two tall chimneys of Hampshire House, a former
hotel converted into apartments, and designed by Caughey &
Evans in 1931 (see The City Review article)

The most attractive private place on Central
Park South is the billiard room at the New York Athletic Club
(see The City Review article), the nicest
pool room in the city, if not the world. Surprisingly, this club's
dining facilities, while large, are not terribly attractive and
because of simple etiquette less inviting even for club members
if they do not get tables by the windows.

Part of the reason that Central Park South
has been disappointing for so long is that the West 50's has long
been an area most New Yorkers have steadfastly avoided because
they were given over to tourist traps and theater throngs, which
in recent decades, has meant out-of-town audiences. Fortunately,
that has begun to change with West 57th Street emerging as a mecca
of sorts for young people attracted to the fame of the Hard Rock
Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and the Bat Bar as well as the nearby
Harley Davidson Cafe on 56th Street and Jekyll and Hyde Club just
north of 57th Street on the Avenue of the Americas.

It is conceivable that Central Park South could
enjoy a meaningful renaissance. The rest of 59th Street is another
question.

View to the west
from near Fifth Avenue

East 59th Street boasts several good office
buildings, the GM Building, of course, on Fifth Avenue and 461
Madison Avenue, the mixed use tower at 500 Park Avenue, 33 East
59th Street, 499 Park Avenue, and 135 East 59th Street, which
is also known as International Plaza. More importantly, it has
two major magnets, Christie's, the auction house, at 502 Park
Avenue, and Bloomingdale's at Lexington Avenue.

Across from Bloomingdale's lies the vacant
Alexander's store, a full-block awaiting redevelopment. The obvious
solution is the raze the store building and make a joint venture
with Bloomingdale's to develop both blocks in a staged development
that would build a new facility for Bloomingdale's on the Alexander
site so that its existing facility could then be razed. The advantage
for the city would be a major widening of, first, 59th Street,
and, secondly, Lexington Avenue's sidewalks. Such a scheme would
greatly improve pedestrian circulation as well as vehicular traffic
in what is one of the world's most congested spots. Moreover,
it would present a major opportunity for a spectacular project
bridging 59th Street. By placing a tall tower on the southeast
corner of 60th and Third Avenue, its would have great views in
most directions. The low-rise base, bridging 59th Street, would
offer very large floors for Bloomingdale's and its landscaped
roof could be a marvelous spot for terrace restaurants overlooking
the Queensborough Bridge and the midtown skyline, assuming that
it would 10 or 12 stories or so high. Ideally, the city could
give a special zoning permit to allow the widening of 59th Street
here in return for added height. Sotheby's, the auction house,
reportedly was negotiating for space in a new development here,
finally recognizing that its incredible decision to abandon its
facility at Madison Avenue and 76th Street for a new factory building
on York Avenue and 72nd Street was less than inspired and certainly
not in keeping with its pretensions.

Central Park
South facades

One of the city's longest development struggles
has been Harley Baldwin's "Bridgemarket" proposal to
open up some of the Piranesian vaults beneath the bridge at First
Avenue for use as a food market. Incredibly, local residents have
fiercely opposed the project on the grounds that it would bring
too many people to the area and have preferred to let 59th Street
between Second Avenue and the River be a shabby, derelict area,
although there are two large and expensive apartment buildings
between Sutton Place and First Avenue. Another developer, Jeffrey
Glick, had planned a twin-towered mixed-use project on the north
side of the bridge in this area that would have lavished extensive
and quite attractive formal gardens along the sides of the bridge.
His project also met with severe community opposition, although
it would have been a major improvement for the area and the city,
but it ran into the precipitous real estate depression of the
late 1980's and early 1990's and its fate is very uncertain. One
would think that area residents would welcome a major extension
of the Sutton Place charisma, but then that's being rational.

View from 67th
Street in Central Park

Across town, 59th Street west of 8th Avenue
is dominated by St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, which is undergoing
a major expansion, and then runs into a superb remodeling of a
former high school and a bunch of lackluster older buildings towards
the river. Just to the north, however, is the south end of the
long-delayed and very controversial Donald Trump project for the
old Penn Yards.

The street, then, has plenty of assets and
a fair amount of problems, but the latter are capable of being
remedied somewhat.

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